How the Red Sox Explain New England

—

Jon Chattman dedicates this book to his parents, Gary and Patti; his wife, Alison; and his son, Noah.

Allie Tarantino dedicates this book to his parents, Ralph and Diane; his wife, Shira; and his children, Cyrus and Juniper.

Contents

Foreword by Fred Lynn

Introduction by Karl Ravech

Preface

1. America’s Park: Fenway

2. Backyard Fenway

3. Misery Is Comedy

4. Wakefield of Dreams

5. For the Love of the Game by Jess Lander

6. Red Sox as a Muse

7. The Invisible Line in Connecticut

8. A Tale of Two Twitties

9. A Tale of Two Bartenders

10. Legion from the Region

11. Plan 9 Innings from Outer Space

12. Growing Up Pesky

13. Here Yesterday, Gone Today by Jess Lander

Acknowledgments

Bibliography

About the Authors

Foreword by Fred Lynn

Baseball is such a familiar game. It’s played almost every day, and most people have played it at one time in their lives. There’s a connection there. In New England people just get caught up in it. And I mean all of New England. The best way I can put it is—it’s a way of life. Wherever you go as a player in Boston, the fans recognize you, they want to be with you and want to be a part of it all.

There will be people in Maine eating lobster on the back porch on a sunny afternoon in late August, and they’ll be listening to the Red Sox. It’s an event there, and it’s all encompassing. It’s just 24/7. As a player, you can never get away from it. I would go fishing to decompress mentally. Players need that. On the West Coast, there are a billion other things to do. It’s not as fervent. People are not as rabid about their team as New Englanders. You’d go to the park, and you’d see the people coming in, and it was apparent to me pretty quickly that people knew what they were talking about. If a player on another team had a great game, they applauded. Now, they didn’t want him to win, but they respected his performance. You could tell they were knowledgeable. The fans came early, and they stayed late. I used to love that. You don’t notice those things as much until you go someplace else, and you miss that electricity.

Part of it is the allure of Fenway Park and the people who played there. I felt it. I was in the same outfield where Ted Williams and Mickey Mantle played. Great players were there before me, and it was really cool. The fans know that stuff. The atmosphere there is like no other. When the team is doing well, it’s great. And when they’re not, the fans will let you know it, and that’s okay, because we’re professionals. They don’t want you to lose, and neither do we. In Boston you do really learn about yourself when you’re not doing well or when your team is not doing well. But you have to stand up and answer the questions. When you go to the park, you better be ready mentally.

I’m kind of the shy and introverted type. When I signed with Boston, I heard about the people and the media. I was just told to Listen to the questions they ask you, and answer them. Don’t volunteer anything else. That was great advice, and I wasn’t a quotable guy. We had plenty of guys on the team who loved to talk and all those kinds of things. It gets a lot easier as time goes on, and I had some preparation. My background was for big-stage things, and I had a pretty good pedigree. I’m really a West Coast guy with roots in the Midwest. I was born in Chicago, but when I was two years old, my family moved us out West. We were a blue-collar family with a middle-class upbringing. I walked to school each day, even though the bus went right by our house. I was shy growing up except when it came to athletics. I wasn’t a forceful guy when I played. I just played the game and adapted to all the other things that came with it as I went along.

So I wasn’t some naive kid. I had played ball in college and played international baseball for three years, representing the United States each time. The international ball was as much media as you could get at that time. So I had a pretty solid base athletically and media-wise. Because of my background in college, I was a high draft pick. I didn’t sign right away in June 1973. I played another year internationally for the U.S. All-Stars against Japan. The Red Sox said to finish that out, and my pro career started in mid-July of that year. I started in Double A in Bristol, Connecticut, where ESPN is now located. I was there only a month and a half, when I was called up to the Triple A World Series, which we won. I played four months in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, before I was called up and got a taste of the majors in September 1974. Since I did pretty well down there, I wasn’t in the minors for a long time. I’ve always been pretty good at seizing the moment, especially when it’s young guys playing against older guys who sort of discount you. That’s the worst.

The Giants were my favorite team growing up, and here I was, with Orlando Cepeda and Juan Marichal as my teammates, sitting and talking with them on the bench. I felt totally comfortable on the field—a little awkward off the field. What helped the next year was that we had a core group of young players. We were all going through the same thing. Jimmy Rice and I were there. Dwight Evans was there at that point, and Pudge (Carlton Fisk) was only 26 or 27. We were all young and we all hung out. The focus wasn’t just on me, so there really was no pressure. And we were pretty bad up until that point, so nobody expected anything of me or the team. We didn’t know what we had, and nobody expected rookies to do anything. There was never any mention of an MVP or Rookie of the Year. We were just trying to win for the first time since 1967. It was fun, and Jimmy and I got into the middle of the lineup quickly. I feel badly for Miguel Cabrera, who’s been playing for a while, and now it’s all about the Triple Crown, and Mike Trout and his rookie year. The media is just all over the place now. I don’t know if I would’ve handled it as well in today’s game. It’s hard to say.

In 1975 we weren’t getting national attention as a team—not until mid-June when I drove in 10 runs and hit three homers. All of the sudden, people were like, Who is this guy? The people on the West Coast knew, but we weren’t on TV, so nobody else did. We had a few nationally televised Game of the Weeks, and I made some good plays. I helped put This Week in Baseball on the map. The team was playing really well, I was playing really well, and questions started being asked. Can the Red Sox do it? Can they pass the Yankees? And, no one mentioned curses back then…it was probably because no team had gotten close.

But at least we were in the fight. After the 1978 playoff loss to the Yankees, that might’ve started the seed for The Curse. And it was in its full-blown glory in 1986. But we didn’t have to worry about that kind of thing. Our group of guys in the ’70s helped put the Red Sox on the map nationally, and that’s when this kind of thing evolved. But it was never about me. It was about the team. If I was playing now, I probably would’ve gotten endorsements mid-season that year. I would have an agent fielding offers for this and that, but I didn’t even have an agent back then!

When I left the Red Sox, it wasn’t under the best of circumstances. Unfortunately, it happened to a number of players under the old regime. When you’re traded away, you want to do well against your old team. The fans were pissed off they got rid of us, but at the same time, you become the enemy right away. I’m pretty good at leaving things behind that are out of my control. You have to put the blinders on, the ear plugs in, and just go on. That’s why some guys who come from small markets fail in New York or Boston. They can’t handle the pressure and the press. Instead of three guys in the locker room after a game, it’s 50, and they’re asking, How come your sinker isn’t sinking? Some guys handle it; some can’t. I always kind of looked forward to facing the Red Sox. But in the 1986 playoffs, I pulled for them. When you play in the American League, you pull for the league. I hate to see teams lose when I think they should win, and 1986 was hard.

I’ve always followed the Sox, and when this new ownership took over in 2002, they initiated a Red Sox Hall of Fame, and I’ve been part of the club since that year. I go back several times a year. I’ve always been a fan of baseball and I always watch the teams I played for. I pull for them. A Trojan, I pull for USC, too. Those loyalties never end. And the same is true with the fans of New England. They just voted me on the All-Fenway Team to celebrate the 100th anniversary of Fenway Park. I was one of the starters, and that’s pretty meaningful to me. One hundred years, and I’m in the starting nine? It means my play was really appreciated. When you’re older, it’s nice to hear from people who say, I remember that catch you made at Yankee Stadium. Sometimes they remember better than I do. It’s very gratifying. Those kinds of events, like that celebration, are not only fun for the fans, but they also are fun for me. I get to see some of my old teammates and also talk baseball with guys I didn’t play with. But seeing teammates of mine is great fun. It’s as if time stands still. We may look older, but we don’t think older. We fall back instantly.

—Fred Lynn

Boston Red Sox (1974–1980)

Introduction by Karl Ravech

I grew up in Needham, Massachusetts, roughly 20 minutes from Fenway Park and Boston Garden and 35 minutes from Foxboro. It, though, took just 15 minutes if your dad drove to the Pats game and left the house at 12:48 for a 1:03 kickoff, which also included parking in a self-created spot behind some yellow tape. For me, it was all but impossible not to be a fan of the Patriots, Bruins, Celtics, and Red Sox. During my lifetime, all four have experienced mountaintop highs and some horrific lows. Much like a family and the seasons of New England, there is an ebb and a flow and an unpredictability, which is why being a passionate sports fan offers so much to one’s development of coping mechanisms. The low points—ball through Bill Buckner’s legs, the David Tyree catch, Magic’s hook shot—have a value as great, if not greater than, a Bobby Orr end-to-end rush or a Larry Bird no-look pass to the Chief for a dunk. Losing happens, winning happens, and if you are lucky enough to enjoy both, then you, too, are ahead of the game.

As a little boy in New England, I did not so much adopt the four teams, as the four teams adopted me. Their homes were my homes, especially Boston Garden and Fenway Park. Some New Englanders profess that as children they were attracted to the Cowboys because of the star on the helmet or—God forbid—the Yankees, because they loved New York City. Not acceptable. With that said, and in my current role as host of a nationally televised sports program, ESPN’s Baseball Tonight, I think it’s appropriate to admit that I don’t believe anyone in my position—even those who preach neutrality and objectivity—are deep down not fans of a team or teams from the city they grew up in or lived nearby.

From his three-point shooting contests to his wars with the Sixers, Lakers, and Pistons, Larry Bird defined my world in the 1980s. There was the final day of May 1984, when my best friend, John Dinneen, and I detoured from our landscaping duties to deliver a 12-pack of Budweiser to the Legend’s house—a good-luck gesture for that night’s Game 2. Dina answered the door and said Larry was sleeping; though, there was a tall guy with long, hairy legs sitting at the kitchen table. She graciously accepted our liquid offering. The Celtics won in overtime that night and took the series in seven. Bird was named series MVP and regular-season MVP, as well. Life couldn’t get any better, or so I thought. But soon the new century came knocking, and my relationship with Fenway Park blossomed.

The year 1999 was magical. Six years into my ESPN experience, the Major League Baseball All-Star Game came to Fenway Park. Steroids was the bubble gum of choice for certain superstars that year, of course, and the Home Run Derby was one for the ages. A ballpark built in the early 1900s hosting players built by synthetics? It was a toxic combination of size and strength, overpowering a building with a Green Monster that had stood for almost a century. How many monsters were actually there that night? Having grown up in the shadows of Fenway Park, the ’99 All-Star Game was the eye-opening moment for me, as I truly came time to understand the significance of Fenway.

As host of Baseball Tonight since 1995, I have developed a relationship with commissioner Bud Selig, speaking frequently with him. Sometimes the conversations are pleasant—other times not so much. But when it comes to conversing about the history of baseball, I could see his face light up through the telephone. He embraces the history of baseball the way one embraces a child who had just found out his best friend of five years was moving away. He cares for it, empathizes with it, and glorifies it. The ceremony on the field before the ’99 All-Star Game—Bud’s baby—was the biggest hug one could give to a child, and it came wrapped in the arms of the sweetest and most comfortable caretaker on the baseball planet: Fenway.

Ted Williams, suffering from strokes and a bad hip, was driven onto the field that was already occupied with the living legends of the game, including Willie Mays, Hank Aaron, and Stan Musial. The current players were drawn to the golf cart like bees to honey. They swarmed around him, many with tears in their eyes, as a weakened Williams came to life, talking baseball and hitting on the same field he played on 60 years earlier. I was standing no more than 20 feet away and could feel the intensity of the moment. On this same dirt and grass, the present and past were colliding and connecting in a way so unique it would take years to understand how special it was.

After Williams threw out the first pitch, Pedro Martinez took the mound and put on a power pitching display for the ages. He struck out four of the six batters he faced, including Hall of Famer Barry Larkin and home run kings Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa. I don’t believe Pedro was ever the same again and I know Fenway Park roared to decibels it had not reached in 80 years—but not quite to the levels it would in 2004 and 2007.

By 2004 and especially in light of another nightmarish American League Championship Series loss in 2003, we Red Sox fans generally understood that World Series titles were reserved for the Yankees. They won them often, and the Red Sox had not since 1918. But everything changed with new ownership and a brash young general manager named Theo Epstein. Like me, Epstein had grown up within a handful of miles of Fenway Park and understood how the history of the team had affected the present as well as the future. The owners led by John Henry recognized Fenway for what it was—a once-in-a-lifetime edifice made even more significant by the events that bind generations. Combine the brains in the front office with the Idiots (a self-proclaimed nickname of the 2004 team), and the ingredients for an earth-shattering event were in place. Voilá—a World Series championship after 86 years, featuring an epic comeback in the ALCS against the Yankees.

In neither 2004 nor 2007 did the Red Sox clinch the World Series on their home field. To deny the impact upon Fenway Park—the Green Monster, the manually operated scoreboard, the wood seats, the uneven concourse cement, the greenest grass you ever saw—is the ultimate conspiracy. It would’ve transformed memories of the millions who had sat in the building. None of the factors that led up to a championship would have had been in place had it not been for the building on Yawkey Way. Now the conversation had changed.

The Red Sox were world champions, and finally friendly Fenway Park had become home to a champion. Fenway did not need it, but it is richly deserved. The stadium lives, breathes, and shines, not because of the people who have played on its field, but because of the connection it has to the millions who have shared a bond with it. Fenway Park is the single-most recognizable and comfortable house ever built.

—Karl Ravech, host of ESPN’s Baseball Tonight

Preface

The Red Sox are a religion. Every year we reenact the agony and the temptation in the garden. Baseball’s child play? Hell, up here in Boston, it’s a passion play.

—George V. Higgins, Time

Across the tapestry of New England, myriad people and topography emerge whose scope are full of beauty, integrity, and wonder. Yet, there is one tie that serves to bind the region together—the national pastime of baseball. Okay, it’s not baseball per se. New England is defined by the love of one particular team, and it certainly isn’t the New York Yankees. As fast as you can say Pawtucket, it’s obviously the Boston Red Sox.

Unlike other regions of the United States stretched across hundreds and hundreds of miles, New England’s state-to-state proximity is like six siblings who are each born a year apart and decide to spend their lives in an old college town. Although the six New England states certainly are different, you get the gist of the analogy. Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont are each diverse with their own respective identities. But other than Fairfield County, Connecticut—a New York Yankees territory within a real Yankees territory—New England is the heart that pumps Red Sox Nation.

That region is symbolized by a classic scene in the 1998 movie, Good Will Hunting. While trying to pick up a girl at a bar, Ben Affleck’s character is confronted by a ponytailed Ivy Leaguer who takes it upon himself to outsmart his Southie adversary by name-dropping moments he’s read about in history. Will Hunting, played by Matt Damon, steps in and blasts the know-it-all for plagiarizing passages and playing them off as his own to impress a girl. The scene ends with the infamous line, Do you like apples? Well, I got her number. How do you like ’dem apples? What the scene doesn’t illustrate, however, is that no matter what class, creed, or pretty much anything else, there is one common train of thought in New England. Whether it’s a bar in Beantown, an oyster farm in Maine, or an eatery in Rhode Island, New Englanders live for the Red Sox. It’s pretty fair to say without the Red Sox, outsiders might generalize New England solely as Kennedy country, a region where rich, clean-cut royalty spend and get away with everything. But as long as they’ve existed, the Boston Red Sox remind us all that New England isn’t just for Connecticut suits and vacation-compound mainstays in Hyannis Port. It’s also the home of working-class heroes who often don’t shave and are sometimes rugged, down-to-earth idiots.

Baseball is followed in other regions, states, and cities. But Chicagoans can choose to root for the Cubs or the White Sox. New Yorkers can follow the front-running Yankees or root for their red-headed stepchildren, the New York Mets. Californians have a plethora of teams to cheer. For New Englanders, however, there’s only one show. In this region, it’s a common religion, where perhaps an Ivy Leaguer with a bad ponytail might find himself matching wits in a bar with Will Hunting one night but high-fiving him the very next day at Fenway Park. From Plymouth Rock to the Industrial Revolution to Thoreau and Dickinson, New England is known for a lot of things. But if you ask any New Englander what defines them, it’ll come down to the boys in navy and red.

The Red Sox explain New England, and New England explains who the Red Sox are. You love the Red Sox when they are good, bad, and 2012 ugly. The term die-hards gets overused in sports today, but you will not find a fan base more worthy of using that term than Red Sox fans. Whether it’s flooding the Huntington Avenue Grounds after the Sox defeated the Pittsburgh Pirates in the very first World Series in 1903 or flooding the plane when the Sox came back to town after their World Series win against the Colorado Rockies in 2007, the fans live, breathe, die, eat, sleep, drink, cry, and any other verb you can use, with this team.

You’ll read a collection of essays here that illustrate this passion. From a tour guide reliving his childhood by taking visitors on a tour of Fenway